


The Blade of the Heart

by TheWoman (reyreyalltheway)



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: (dont tell my WIPs im here), Canon Compliant, F/M, Future Fic, Gingerrose - Freeform, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Men Trying To Cope With War, Mentions of Pregnancy, Post-Canon, Pregnancy, Pregnant Character, Slavery, child trafficking, featuring dune-era timothee bec DUH, in which i give Broom Boy a starring role, no longer a one-shot because you are all ENABLERS! the whole lot of you! for SHAME!!!, one-shot only because i am trying to be a reformed woman
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-16
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-18 16:29:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 13,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29492844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reyreyalltheway/pseuds/TheWoman
Summary: Twenty years of galactic peace changes the landscape.In the absence of Lightsiders, fear festers in the galaxy; Force-users are being hunted down, history reconstructed to cater to political agenda.Amidst a dangerous distrust of his abilities, and the cartels who want to kill him, a young man looks for his father.ORThe canon-compliant, speculative future fic, set 20 years after TROS. Inspired by that picture of Timothee Chalamet in Dune. :)
Relationships: Armitage Hux/Rose Tico, Poe Dameron & Armitage Hux, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 16
Kudos: 49





	1. THE JEDI

**Author's Note:**

  * For [diasterisms](https://archiveofourown.org/users/diasterisms/gifts).



> For Thea. Whose fault it is I am even writing fic in the first place, and whose talent(!!!), creativity, wit, grace, and kindness left me no choice but to stan. :( I have admired her for so very long, across (a whole lotta) fandoms... actually my entire fandom life is just Thea yelling about things on tumblr/twitter and me wanting to watch / consume said things. :)) I think we all know how #blesst we all are to have her in Reylo, and this is just me trying to show a drop of appreciation.
> 
> Luv u thea huhu :(
> 
> Beta'd by the lovely Robbie @thehobbem. <3

_“There is in each of us an ancient force that takes and an ancient force that gives. A man finds little difficulty facing that place within himself where the taking force dwells, but it’s almost impossible for him to see into the giving force without changing into something other than man...”_

— Frank Herbert, “Dune”

†

55ABY

Twenty years of galactic peace changes the landscape.

It renders war into the realm of the unthinkable; history into a mouldable, functional narrative that shifts with the tides of political power, each retelling only a shadow of the former, until merely a bastardized version remains. One that masks violence and destruction with the trappings of necessity.

At least, that’s what the Galactic High Council — formerly the New Republic — is trying to do with it.

Senator Poe Dameron knows this, too. He understands the political use of a tailored history, the way he once understood an X-wing like the back of his hand, the way he remembers the name of every single pilot and callsign that has perished under his command. The way he can pull up flight stratagems from memory two decades later, because war leaves no survivors. Not of the living, not of the dead.

The dissonance only grows between the war-borne, and everyone else.

Which is why he is not surprised when his opposition to the Council’s most recent bill is received with great distrust.

“This is… not right. It’s not right.”

The holopad falls on his desk with a loud thud, so both hands can rub his face in the universal gesture of spiritual frustration. He doesn’t need the details to know how _not right_ the bill is, and yet...

The complications are already exhausting to assess, he feels his hairline receding by the minute. 

_Kriffing politics._

BB-8’s tone takes on the programmed pleading it has learned from Poe’s many years as a stubborn senator, and even more years as a stubborn pilot.

“Yeah, well, the Council _is wrong._ I don’t care how many times I have to say it, this is… this is all wrong. I’m not gonna sign a bill so they can glorify us or the Resistance or whoever — It’s _wrong._ If we’re not gonna learn from our mistakes, if we’re just gonna… kriffin’ _sugarcoat_ it…”

And yet.

He does not finish the sentence. There are no words. His stress can only be expressed with a heavy sigh and a slumping in his very cozy chair in his rather large office. Outside, Theed’s cityscape is bathed blue-gold by dusk, but the picturesque beauty of the Naboo capital feels empty compared to its dark history.

He longs for the grit and simplicity of battle. But not as much as he hates himself for it.

 _That is the point,_ Poe thinks, observing the dying light of day streaming from his window.

He doesn’t want to touch history. He is not a headstrong “flyboy” anymore. Peace has done nothing but sharpen his hindsight, until all he has left is a disdain for glory. For war. For the man he once was. For the cost of winning.

It has taken him years to realize that there are no winners. Only the living and the lost. The guilty and the dead.

“I need to visit an old friend,” he tells his droid, and BB-8 immediately knows who to comm.

~†~

The light freighter that lands in Naboo’s Moenia Starport is eyed with distaste.

Its chassis made it look less like a ship and more like an insult to freighters everywhere. It is clear that it has been heavily — but also questionably — modified, though to what end remains unanswered, with its flaking duralloy plates and the transparisteel viewports covered with the compounded decay of several unnamable atmospheres. With the way it wobbles into the misty spaceport, in its ancient armaments and ridiculously unstable thud of a landing, it gives the impression of a drunken joke that has somehow slurred its way into planetfall.

“Look at that piece of junk,” says one guard to another. “Who would even fly that thing?”

“I wouldn’t get in that bulky garbage even if they paid me in Council allowance,” his companion chuckles in agreement. “The pilot must have a death wish or something.”

The ship makes an unfortunate hissing sound after landing, and the few pilots within earshot whistle to themselves in poorly-concealed grimace. _Yikes,_ is the echoed sentiment. _Poor pilot._

But the young man that exits the old Corellian ship is anything but.

Clad in the black, vaguely familiar garb of the Outer Rim’s upper echelons, and looking far too young and well-to-do to be piloting the old freighter, he hurries down the ship’s ramp in brief strides, presumably to check which component is responsible for his barely passable touchdown.

An older pilot approaches him, curious to take a closer look. 

Both at the ship, and the young man assessing it from a few paces away.

“Quite the hull you got there,” she tells him.

The young man does a double take, surprised at her sudden presence.

“Yeah, she’s… seen better,” he replies, still focused on his ship.

“Corellian, isn’t it? YT-series I think—”

“YT-1300f, yeah. I think one of the vector plates is missing.” 

“Haven’t seen a freighter like that since the war.”

She watches closely as he eyes her sideways with attention.

“Come to think of it, there’s a story or two about one of these light freighters,” she tells him, testing just how much her eyesight could be deceived. “They called one the _Millennium Falcon_. Said it was the ‘secret weapon’ of the Republic. Said it saw more battles than any other starfighter, from all the stories. ‘Course, it’s all just rumours now; nobody knows about those old warships anymore.”

She watches him still, his gaze unmoving. 

“If you’re looking to get yours repaired, you’re outta luck, kid. I don’t think they make parts for ships like these anywhere _near_ here. Shoulda taken it to a bigger spaceport. Or head to Theed, try your luck there.”

“I don’t need the exact parts, just something good enough to modify.”

“Huh. You did a lot of these modifications?” It’s a trick question, and sure enough, the young man turns to her then with a full smirk, catching her line of questioning.

It is, at once, familiar and misplaced. Something eerily resonant in the shape of his features.

“I don’t think I was around yet when these mods were made,” he replies.

 _Smart kid, this one_ , she thinks.

“Mind if I ask how you got this old scrap heap to work? Seems like an interesting story.”

There is silence from him. He remains fixed at his ship for a moment, and then he’s looking at her with a kind of assessment that speaks of things he does not want to say.

She watches the dark circles under his eyes twitch.

“It was my mother’s,” he says quietly. “It was a gift to her.” 

The older pilot nods.

“Brave woman, piloting a health hazard like this,” she comments, stifling the pain of nostalgia. Unsure if she even wants to ask more, or know more. Some wounds would do to remain unopened, no matter how curious she may be.

That earns her nothing but a quick glance and further silence. So she extends her hand to introduce herself: “I’m Jess Pava. I run the nearest repair dock from here.”

He shakes her hand, hesitant, before he tells her his name. “Ani.”

He doesn’t give his last name because he doesn’t want to, Jess can tell. She doesn’t press him about it. Based on his pallor, she can see that the poor kid has not slept or eaten properly in days. Her motherly instincts flare to life.

“Nice to meet a pilot like you, Ani. We don’t get much of that kind of skill around here anymore,” she says. “But, seems to me like you should try to make your ship spaceworthy first before giving her another go. Your panel’s bust and you need to check on those sublight engines, I wouldn’t trust her for re-docking before then. No sane port would clear you for landing until you do.”

“Thanks,” he tells her, detached and tired, but grateful nonetheless. His eyeline falls to the ground in defeat, and Jess is sighing.

“Tell you what, kid. Your ship’s not going anywhere, and the first transports to Theed don’t operate ‘til morning. My husband and I live not far from here. You can stay with us a while, get some rest while you can.”

Her offer and concern are met only with a suspicious glance. And maybe a weariness she knows too well. One that comes from being on your guard for too often, for too long.

“You don’t want me as a guest,” he tells her.

Just like that, Jess thinks that perhaps she _should_ re-evaluate her offer to the stranger who has landed in her port with a washed-up warship and a secret history. _I don’t want him as a guest,_ echoes in her mind for a brief moment…

But he reminds her too much of someone they lost in the aftermath. It’s the least she could do.

“It’s no trouble, really,” she tells him.

Something unburdens from his features for a brief moment. He considers, then a sad, tired smile crosses his face. “Thank you, but—”

“C’mon, kid. I’m not a good cook, but my husband does a _mean_ nuna stew. You look like you haven’t had a home-cooked meal in years. No offense.”

He chuckles then — it sounds like a scoff, like the bitterness of experience — and there is something sharp about him, something heavy about the angles of his face, the pale freckled skin, the dark waves that fall just to his chin. This, too, is a familiarity. Jess could have sworn she had heard of a face just like his, once upon a time; the brooding countenance of the general’s son, the enemy whose features were hidden behind a mask. 

The Supreme Leader rumoured to have died fighting for the last Jedi, in the Battle of Exegol.

The last blood-born Skywalker, rising to the Light one final time.

But Jess does not get very far with this muddy line of thought; it is too disorienting to ponder, too far removed from present circumstance. So she shoves it all to the back of her mind.

“There’s nearby port shelters and hostels too, but…” She eyes his stifling all-black attire with a bemused look. He looks down, takes in his wardrobe. Looks around to observe the casual, colorful drapings of Nabooians, and the sparse pilots and personnel in the port, eyeing him with judgement.

“Good point,” he concedes.

~†~

Poe Dameron steps out of his decommissioned starfighter at Varykino’s cliffside docking hangar, and despite the short notice of arriving just in time for supper, he hears the telltale patter of small feet and the excited shrieks of the children waiting for his arrival.

As predicted, three little boys of varying heights rush to greet him in the space of the small hangar, all yelling their excited “Uncle Poe!”, their incoherent joyful clamoring for his attention making him laugh as they tug on his person. Their pregnant mother waddles up to them a few paces behind. 

“Alright, alright, tykes, take it easy,” he tells them even as two try to hang off of his arms to be lifted up, the last little one trying to hang onto his left leg as he walks.

Their mother gives a short, sharp command for them to cease and desist, and to clean up and prepare for dinner and “Leave Uncle Poe alone, boys!”, and without having to be told twice, they scamper off, albeit still rowdy until she gives them a final glare and they fully obey.

Rose Tico has that effect.

Her smile when he sees her is bright and affectionate, just as her friendship and no-nonsense counsel has been an anchoring constant in the twenty years since.

“My friend,” he greets with a warmth reserved for those he’s fought beside, as Rose steps into his bear hug as much as she can, given her round belly. “It’s so good to see you.”

“You’re in trouble, aren’t you,” she deadpans, the words muffled in his embrace. As a retired stateswoman, Rose knows the sentiment.

“You know me so well. Where’s Hugs?”

“Present and accounted for.”

The former First Order general ambles towards them in his limp, bearing not quite as much warmth as his wife, but nearly half of it. A very far cry from the man whose war crimes trials nearly tore the High Council — and half of the known galaxy — apart, but Poe knows a miracle when he sees one.

He has since come to recognize it as the grace that it is.

“Hugs,” Poe greets, coincidentally just as he opens his arms.

“Dameron,” Hux replies, and they are both embracing with genuine friendship from twenty years of working out how to survive the consequences of the men they once were. It had taken them fifteen years and several fiery court trials to acclimate to each other, five more to truly become friends, but there’s something to be said about how war creates brotherhood after the fact.

No matter the faction, the stain remains, and it is the same stain: an unspeakable red that the rest of the world will never have to see.

~†~

“Moenia is Naboo’s cultural capital,” Jess tells Ani as she drives them around the city’s bustling campuses and floral roads. The atmospheric mists lower visibility, rendering the landspeeder slower than Jess would have liked, but she’s lived here long enough to curb her speeding habits in favor of public safety. “We have a lot of universities and libraries. We live across town, nearer the transport decks to Theed, so you shouldn’t have a problem getting there in the morning.”

Ani has remained minimally-responsive thus far. Jess chalks it up to his tiredness, but it burdens her to see someone so young, yet so distant and tentative.

“You visiting family here?” Jess asks.

He glances at her, and it is the first clear emotion she’s seen from him; he looks troubled at her question.

“I’m… actually looking for family,” he says. He does not follow this up with an explanation. Jess does not expect one.

“Oh? Does your mother live in Naboo?” she asks, knowing he might not answer.

This time, he does smile, but there is something pained about it. “No, I’m — I’m looking for my dad.”

“He’s from around here? Maybe I know him, Naboo’s human population isn’t too big. What’s his name?”

There is a moment before Ani answers. “Ben,” he says, a little more quietly than even his previous admissions. “My father’s name is Ben.”

Jess does not comment, and tries not to think too much about the uncanny coincidence. She just drives on.

~†~

Dinner in Varykino is a comfortable affair, with the children being their noisy selves, fighting for their Uncle Poe’s attention, often with tales of increasing imagination, sibling rivalry, and the occasional morsel projected across the table. Encouraged, of course, by the affectionate tone that Hux takes on when he’s talking to — or as he likes to put it “ _discussing strategy with_ ” — his children.

“The kids are alright,” Poe comments, an aside to Hux.

“I wouldn’t be too comfortable. They might yet wise up to kill me, as they should,” Hux whispers back with a chuckle. It’s an old joke, but a dark one. Poe knows where it comes from.

“Snap, _please!”_ Rose chides when her eight-year-old eldest makes a valiant attempt at a spoon-catapult. “We have a guest!”

(“Use your thumb next time. Much stronger,” Hux whispers to his eldest, even as he winks at his other son and mouths _Shields up_.)

“How’s the leg?” Poe asks Hux while Rose is busy negotiating with the children and calling the droids to clean up. Almost already forgetting his political troubles in the company of family.

“Still excruciating, I am pleased to report.”

“You know, there _are_ advancements in droidtech that can help with that.”

There’s a short, pensive moment that Hux looks at his family, before he turns to Poe to reply:

“I appreciate the sentiment,” he says in a low whisper meant for just the two of them, “but we both know I won’t allow it.”

There is dignity and more than enough pride in his refusal; a militant resolve that Poe is familiar with.

“It’s better this way,” Hux adds.

And Poe does know. That there are certain things men like him and like Hux would never let themselves have. Things they could not live with having. Hux bears his handicap the way Poe bears his political duties, even if he would like nothing more than to quit the senate and herd nerfs somewhere in the Outer Rim, unbothered and unbotherable. Build a spaceport for a community, maybe start a family; the picture of a perfect retirement. Neither of them would _ever_.

Because it is only these sacrifices that they can sleep at night. When the nightmares come, as they always do, it is a piece of their humanity they can hold on to, at least.

Rey didn’t lose herself only for the rest of them to take what they can, of the peace she had bought and paid for.

When the children have been ushered away to prepare for bed, and the remnants of a messy, five-course, three-children dinner having been cleaned up, Hux moves to his wife’s side. 

Rose leans back to level a proper look at Poe. “Well? Spit it out, Senator.”

Poe sighs. “You know about the Archives Act?”

Rose’s eyes widen with indignation; her husband’s face contorts in disgust.

“You mean they’re _still_ pushing for it? Is this a joke? Poe—”

“Unfortunately, no. But listen—”

“That is _unbelievable!_ It’s unacceptable! Dameron, you can’t let this happen!”

“Yes, but—”

“We — _all of us,_ including nearly two thirds of the Supporting Council _—_ agreed that the Archives Act is revisionism _at best,_ what part of that changed?! Please tell me this is _not_ the same act that the majority vetoed. Why is it back on the table?!”

“Love, let the man explain.”

Hux’s firm but gentle tone catches his venting wife off guard. The decades have turned him nearly unrecognisable from the General he once was, but old habits come useful at times. Rose Tico has been known to be the most headstrong and vocal political leader of her years, but it is her husband’s hand — the one that is now rubbing circles on her shoulder — that truly placates her.

It’s not every day that a romance can move entire systems into sympathy for a war criminal, but theirs did. Twenty years later, that love remains.

Rose takes a deep breath as Hux nods towards Poe.

“I assume you’re not here to retell the Act,” Hux addresses Poe now, wearing the mind he had used for strategy, once upon a time.

“I was on a briefing call, with Connix. She explained the reasoning of the Council. You’re not gonna like it.”

“I bet,” Rose comments, still pissy.

“The unrest is getting stronger. The hatred and fear is spreading, especially in former First Order-occupied worlds. It used to be just in the Outer Rim, but the Mid Rim systems are getting ideas, too. There’s... chatter.” Poe sighs, rubbing his greying beard before continuing. “We’ve had… word of this, for a while now. But it’s only recently we... confirmed an underground faction hunting down Force-sensitive younglings and selling them to Outer Rim territories.”

Both Rose and Hux freeze at this. Rose’s surprise turns to disbelief, which turns to vehemence; Hux loses all gentleness, his features turning cold and stony.

“A lot of systems are still angry,” Poe continues. “The rumours about the dangers of the Force, about the First Order and about Snoke and the Dark Side... It’s fuelled fear for too long. That’s why the Council wants to pass the Archives Act. They want to… _minimize_ talk, discourage the rumours. They think, if we could just shift the narrative—”

“ _Poe—_ ”

“If we could just pretend that the Force had nothing to do with the war, say it was just brute military strength and fear tactics, talk about the Resistance more, then people eventually forget and we could contain the unrest.”

Poe watches several emotions flicker across Rose’s face, her eyes watering.

“But the Force is _real,_ ” Rose says. “It’s… Luke’s sacrifice was _real,_ Poe. You were there. Rey’s fight, Kylo Ren’s _death—_ ”

“I know that, I do.” Poe's heart aches because of what he has to say: “The Force _is_ real. _We_ know that because we saw it. But how many of us are left? You, me? Finn, Kay, maybe a few more? Rose, the people’s experience of—of Force-users and Force-sensitives, it’s always been death and destruction. The First Order, the Knights of Ren. Snoke, _Palpatine_ —”

“That’s not fair.”

“—We have had no new Jedi in the last twenty years, not even before the war. Finn and the other defectors have zero training and zero experience, and he can’t use the Force in public as a High Council member, you know that. The last living Jedi was Rey, and the knowledge of the Jedi is gone with her.”

At the mention of their friends, Rose tilts her head up to keep the tears from coming.

“All we have—all we can _work with,_ right now, is a peace that’s threatened by the fear of the Dark Side. A fear that is spreading, and affecting entire systems like a tumor. And I’m sorry, Rose, but… the situation is complicated. Without Rey, without _Lightsiders..._ ”

The following silence is weighed down with twenty years’ worth of grief.

“So, is that it?” Rose spits out, watery and angry. “After everything, after Luke and Rey and Leia… After _Ben_ —” 

“Solo doesn’t _count!_ ”

“—We’re all just going to try to forget? Because people are _afraid?_ ”

 _When you put it that way…_ Poe thinks, unable to look his friend in the eye, hating himself for being put in this position.

“What does Finn think?” Hux asks.

Poe is quiet, for a moment. “He thinks that, if Rey wanted to be found, she would have let us know.”

Rose is quiet for a while, but her optimism wins out: “It’s a big galaxy, Poe. She’s out there, I _know_ it.”

“There’s something else.” Poe’s tone is solid and heavy, “We’ve picked up chatter around the territories. It’s not the usual Ghost stories. It’s about the last Jedi.”

~†~

Out in the Outer Rim, where word-of-mouth is bartered like currency and rumours spread like wildfire through the right channels, a small smugglers’ base in Dathomir harbours a ghost.

“Is’ true, I seen him with me _eye!_ ” Something about the way his lonely eyeball widens in his scar-wrought face makes his companions lean in, as though he wasn’t prone to exaggeration. The gruel in their hands temporarily forgotten in favor of an intriguing story, as the firelight casts long shadows where they are cradled by the planet’s ruins.

“Shut yer hole, Brekket, theren’t no such thing as Force ghosts—”

“No, no, not Force ‘ghosts’ _. The_ Force Ghost!” There’s a series of murmurs at his insinuation, disbelief and shock, because if there’s one thing a well-travelled smuggler knows, it’s that rumours like this are just as likely as any. A grain of truth can be a heavy thing.

“You seen him?”

“Aye, I has. Just yesterday, I’s doing the rounds. I saw him, over at—” he blinks, temporarily disoriented, before continuing, “It’s just like in the stories, yellow saber and all! And they weren’t kiddin’, he’s a _big_ man—”

“Wait, where’d you see him? Around _here?_ These parts? _”_

His companions are antsy, the story doing most of the work, but Brekket just blinks twice at the question.

“I’m… not sure. I… can’t remember…”

The circle of squatting smugglers continue to pester their companion, trading rumours and hearsay in the same manner they’d trade goods for credits. About things they’ve heard from others, told as though they’ve seen it themselves.

“I heard he’s Vader’s ghost himself, looking to avenge his wife—” This elicits much dissent.

“Nah, no way. Vader _killed_ his wife—”

“‘Vader’? That story’s a _relic_ if I ever heard one.”

“No, is’ not Vader, it was his grandson! Hear me out—”

“Is’ just the Force playin’ tricks! Is’ all the work of the Dark Side, is what I heard…”

“Don’t be runnin’ yer mouths there, lads, the witches can hear.”

There is a temporary hush at this; a gentle reminder that they are on borrowed territory.

“But have you lads heard of the gravestone, just over the Praxeum ruins? The one for the last Jedi?”

Thus were the rumours varied and inconsistent, with the truth always just a little bit out of reach. 

Even with a ghost lingering at the edge of their settlement. 

Just a shadow of the old war, passing by.

~†~

“So, Ani. What brings you to Moenia?” Beau, Jess’ husband, asks over supper. “We don’t get visitors very often, so it really is good to see a new face.”

The Pava-Kin homestead lies at the edge of the city, where the mists are thinner, revealing some of Naboo’s meadowland and hillsides; the estate itself is solitary and idyllic in its setting, home to a large bungalow, with its exteriors and pathways lined with light for visibility in the green mists, the landspeeder parked out in the courtyard.

Ani takes a while to reply with the steady spoonfuls of stew he shovels into his mouth. “I’m—uh, looking for someone.”

“I heard,” Beau tells him. His spectacled eyes are lined with age, and a kind of intelligence that hasn’t lost its inquisitive nature. “Jess tells me you had a bit of a, er, spotty landing at the docks.”

Jess watches as Ani fights down an embarrassed chuckle with his mouth full. He looks young again, less troubled like this, without his intimidating outer robe, eating dinner, trying to keep his manners despite clearly being too hungry to pause for breath.

(Just like that, Jess is transported to twenty years ago, in the mess halls of the Resistance, dining with her scavenger friend who ate as though she had to choose between chewing and breathing. The resemblance is uncanny, Jess has a hard time looking away.)

“Yeah. Had trouble with my vector plates,” Ani tells Beau. 

“Have you checked the sublight engines? It’s usually one of the core compressors.” Jess’ eleven-year-old, Tallyn, pipes up with wide blue eyes, her usually shy demeanour replaced by a fascination with their guest. Ani smiles at her, amused at her knowledge.

“No, I have not. But it’s on my list. Thank you for reminding me.” Ani wipes at his messy mouth.

“You’re welcome. It’s either that, or you’re missing a vector plate,” she tells him matter-of-fact, as she stands up to refill the pitcher in the adjoining kitchen.

Ani immediately gets up, glances at his hosts respectfully before following to help the girl, his manners catching up to him. Beau takes the opportunity to raise a questioning brow at his wife, leaning in to whisper: 

“Is it just me or does he remind you of—”

Jess sends him a glare, an unspoken _not now, later,_ but she is distracted when, from the corner of her eye, she watches the large pitcher slip from her daughter’s hands…

And hover inches above the ground, just as her guest snatches it and returns it to Tallyn like nothing happened.

Jess averts her eyes, her heart starting to pound. She asks her husband about his day instead, trying to ignore the way she’s putting the pieces together. Trying to swallow down the curl of foreboding in her gut.

Maybe her offer _was_ a mistake.

The Force is known to bring trouble with it, after all.

.:.

Tallyn brushes her blonde hair out of her eyes as she takes the pitcher from him, surprised and confused. Ani mentally curses himself for his reflexes.

He doesn’t want to risk this family with the knowledge of him. And he _certainly_ doesn’t want to have to open up to the Force for self-defense, if it comes down to it; not everyone is so friendly when they discover his abilities. So he just subtly puts a finger to his lips from where he is crouched near the floor, shakes his head in the tiniest way.

Tallyn understands, looks behind her to where her parents are talking, before she asks with a whisper:

“Are you a Jedi?”

Her eyes are wide with wonder. It hits something inside him.

“You won’t tell anyone?” He asks, more request than question. Tallyn’s eyes are the widest blue they’ve been the whole evening. She shakes her head vehemently. He gives her a small smile, hiding the sad fact of why he is here.

 _There are no more Jedis,_ he doesn’t say. _Just the one._

He ushers them both back to the table.

~†~

The ghost that makes its way across the old Praxeum ruins doesn’t concern itself with the possible presence of Rancors, or the probability of encountering one of the more violent smugglers’ gangs that have made this planet a base of operations. It sticks to the shadows, but it does not stop.

Not until it reaches the edge of the ruins, and sees the words carved on decrepit stone. The words he had come here for.

_Olar lies te kyr'yc jetiise. Ogir Kelir cuyir nayc naak par kaysh._

He moves closer, touches the engraving, more human now than the ghost stories have since made him to be. His fingers pass over the fresh markings, as though the letters could come alive at his touch. As though they could tell him the truth.

The shuddering breath he makes is heard only by his thunderous, breaking heart.

When he exhales, it is a name.

His longing is clear in the way he ignores the small army that circles him. 

The tall, shrouded figure that he is does little for the way he is surrounded. The blasters aimed at him reveal themselves, as footsteps echo in the red Dathomiri night. He does not move an inch from where he stands.

“Steady, lads,” booms a voice from behind him. “We’ve got him now.”

~†~

“ _Tallissan Amilyn_ , what has gotten into you?”

Jess scolds her daughter for clumsily dropping her _second_ glass of the evening, sending it shattering across the floor. She does not miss the pained, almost exasperated way that Ani’s eyes close, the covert frown he sends Tallyn, and the little snicker her daughter sends his way.

Jess smiles in spite of herself. Children will be children, after all.

Beau turns to Ani just as the droids come to clean up the mess: “So, Ani. You never did tell us what brings a young pilot such as yourself to our corner of the galaxy.”

The young man — lighter now, the food and company having done wonders to his countenance — does not carry the walled-off quality Jess had observed of him back at the docks; his expressions dance around a longing to be himself, even as he glances at the two of them shyly. Mindful that he is merely a guest, passing in the night.

“I’m… looking for someone. All I have is a callsign. Not even sure if it’s worth looking into, but it’s all I’ve got.”

“Mom was a pilot in the war!” Tallyn says excitedly, the same time her father asks: “Your dad was a pilot?” Beau leans in with interest. He glances at his wife.

“No, I don’t—I don’t think so. I don’t know,” Ani tells them, staring at a spot on the table, lost in thought. “But I’m hoping ‘Black Leader’ can tell me more about him.”

At this, Jess and Beau freeze. Ani catches their expressions.

“You know him.” It is not a question.

“That’s Senator Poe Dameron now,” Jess says. “That was his callsign, in the war. He’s in... Theed. He’s part of the High Council.”

Ani’s face lights up. “He’s in Theed?”

“What are the odds, eh?” Beau laughs.

“That’s perfect, that’s—”

Ani stops mid-sentence. He is completely still, his gaze far, as though listening.

“Ani?”

Jess sees the way his face completely changes. The way his youth is shuttered behind an intensity that is immediately alarming. Something passes before his eyes: fear striking like lightning.

“Wh-what is it?”

Jess picks it up at the same time her daughter turns toward the courtyard: the humming of speeders in the distance. She feels her heart thud. From the way her husband finds her hand, he feels the same.

But the moment of hesitation is gone from Ani’s eyes. In its place is somber focus.

“Do you have anything that can take you far away from here, very fast?” he asks.

~†~

In the red mists of Dathomir, in the ruins of the unbuilt Praxeum, no less than a dozen smugglers and mercenaries surround the elusive phantom that had been wreaking havoc on their business.

“Not so scary now, is he?” Their leader — the merc and businessman known as Atticus, heading one of the five smugglers’ circles that control the lucrative business of pawning off Force-sensitives — comments to his men, when their hooded subject turns around with his hands up in surrender. “When you know how to trap a _ghost,_ that’s when you know stories are just that. Stories. This is no ghost. He’s just a man. Aren’t you?”

The man in question is unmoving and silent.

The effect is unnerving. As though he is inhabiting what they’ve feared him to be all along — a creature of myth. Something more than living, less than dead. It does not help that their ghost is very much built like a man: a rather tall, imposing one, at that. Cloaked and hooded in darkness.

A few of the men step back from what they’ve caught. Unsure if they like the catch.

“ _Aren’t you?_ ” Atticus is impatient, yelling his question as he raises his blaster to show it off. He fires a warning shot, and the blaster bolt explodes right above their captive’s head, hitting stone. Their captive, however, still does not move.

“You know how we found you?” Atticus asks, his composure breaking bit by bit. He makes a series of clicking sounds, and just off the edge of the clearing, a little boy trots towards him, his ankles chained together, his bare feet scabbed and grimy.

This is the only movement they get from their ghost: his head turning towards the boy as he walks with little steps towards Atticus.

“Meet my son,” he tells him when the boy stands at his side, his shaved head — and the rest of him — uncared for, dressed in rags and looking little more than a slave. Atticus rubs the boy’s head, as though taunting their silent captive. “This one told us when he sensed something close by. A good lad that he is. Very handy, these Force-sensitives. You never know when you need something to bark at a stranger.”

The little boy doesn’t look like he understands. He does not look like he thinks or feels of anything.

~†~

Moenia’s mist-dappled nights are viridescent, reflective of Naboo’s atmosphere. Which is fortunate, because even in the low visibility, Ani can see the black speeders that are halting, a little ways off the courtyard in front of the Pava-Kin homestead.

He counts five—six speeders. He takes deep breaths to center himself.

Off to his left, he senses the Pava-Kins making their way to their nearby underground hangar.

Ani hopes they leave fast enough.

His fingers twitch for a weapon. But he does not carry his with him right now; he does not want to be found with it.

He watches as his pursuers dismount their speeders and approach him. Six of them in total. He knows most of them, has shared meals with them once upon a time. He knows their home planets, can still remember some of their parents’ names. Most of them are older than him, some by half a lifetime.

He holds his ground in the courtyard. He’s not looking forward to this confrontation.

“ _Forcer!_ ” one of them calls out. Ani grits his jaw.

_That is not my name._

~†~

“He has a name, Pryde.”

Their ghost’s words might as well have been a weapon for the way the men show their discomfort, shuffling and uneasy from where they train their blasters at him. The low, clear voice is carried well by the blood-red night. It sounds too much like a warning, for it to be ignored.

Atticus feels his veins run cold at their phantom’s words.

He grips the child’s head by his side more forcefully, shooting his blaster in anger. Aiming to kill.

The blaster bolt freezes mid-air, half-way between him and the unmoving phantom. Buzzing in stasis.

His entire team is thrown off; someone drops his weapon and scurries away. The rest are convinced they are up against more than they bargained for.

Which they are.

~†~

Ani stands before the six men, unarmed and unguarded, as he wants to seem. Buying time, waiting for the telltale sounds of a lightspeed vessel making its way out of there.

“Gentlemen,” he tells them, unsure of how to proceed except to make small talk for as long as necessary. “Nice of you to catch up. I was starting to get worried.”

(He hadn’t known they’ve been tracking him, of course. If he had, he never would have landed on this planet, in this city, or anywhere near sentient lifeforms.)

And then, to the one coming closer, he issues a greeting: “Grett.” Ani leans on familiarity to de-escalate the clear hostility the man approaches with, Grett’s blaster ever just a moment away from his trigger-happy fingers.

“Where’s my ship, _Forcer?_ ” Grett walks closer, and the mists part to reveal one of Ani’s ex-colleagues.

Smuggling spices, weaponry, luxury goods, and other contraband have all been well and good. Ani has been known to be a quiet and occasionally helpful team player; his reputation as a “good luck charm” often made him the first pick on a smuggling run. The cartels found him handy enough.

But Ani draws the line at smuggling younglings.

(In hindsight, maybe he _should_ have stopped at drawing that particular line. Instead, he had — in a manner of speaking — coloured it in, hung it to dry, and framed it for display; destroying their base of operations, freeing the children, and sending word to the Galactic High Council about Grett’s enterprising desire to get into child trafficking might have been a little… too aggressive. 

Stealing the Millennium Falcon on a whim when he saw it, well. That was just a bonus.)

“Maybe you can tell, but I have no ship here with me—” Ani has to cut his sentence short when, out of nowhere, a shot nearly hits him square in the face were he not looking out for it. He ducks just in time. It grazes the curls near his forehead.

_Kriff._

“Listen, Grett, I know you’re upset with me—”

“That doesn’t even _begin_ to cover it, _Forcer._ ” Grett spits out the term like an insult, which, okay, Ani understands it’s shorter than “Force-user” or “Force-sensitive” but, really. He should stop trying to make it happen.

“Where. Is. My. Ship?” Grett’s favorite goons flank him on his left and right, with some unfamiliar faces lagging a few steps behind.

“Why the ship?” Ani asks, his voice a little quiet, as though musing only to himself, even as his adrenaline readies for a beating. “Why is that rustbucket more important than me? I’m a little hurt, Grett,” he tells them.

He knows why the Falcon is important _to him._ He doesn’t know why anyone else would want it.

But instead of reply, Grett takes out his lightwhip, unravels it before Ani. The mists catch on the flickering blue glow, the make of the whip clearly unstable and lacking finesse.

Ani glares at the detestable weapon.

He has seen what that weapon can do, the kind of lashes it can inflict on young skin, especially for those who try to escape. The way it had pulled at running ankles and struck the air with a loud crack. He’d watched in horror the first time he’d seen it at work, at Grett’s little stint in Dathomir. The one he had sabotaged, so that the younglings would not be sold to a life of slavery, bartered by the cartels.

Something deep and dark rattles inside his ribcage, curling its claws around his heart. Whispering to be unleashed.

There are six of them, and he is only one. Yet, it somehow doesn’t matter.

Ani keeps a straight face. Takes deep breaths.

Grett flicks the whip experimentally. It crackles, blue and electric, disturbing the mists around it.

“You bit off more than you can chew, Ani. Do you have any idea how much Atticus would pay for a Force-sensitive your age? Not to mention, you _stole_ from us. You know what that means.”

Ani barely hears them; he is too tuned in to himself. He can feel his blood boiling.

(He still has not heard the whirs of a lightspeed vessel, but he is finding it more and more difficult to care.)

“Why do you want the ship?” Ani asks, and he is aware his mood is very different now. He can see the way Grett smirks at the change.

“Atticus commissioned to find it,” Grett tells him. “So yes, I’m here for the ship, mainly. Catching you is just a bonus; I need a peace offering after what you did to my deal with him.”

Moenia’s mists make it challenging, but Ani counts ten, maybe twelve blasters that he’ll have to deal with, aside from the other weapons he’s sure they’re carrying. 

“C’mon, Ani. It’s six-to-one,” Grett tells him, and Ani thinks he catches a glimmer of regret when Grett adds, “Don’t make this hard. Tell us where the ship is, and maybe we’ll just freeze you in carbonite and call it a day.”

And then, after a tense moment, Grett shifts, looks at Ani with betrayal: “You know I can’t go back without you. Dead or alive. Don’t make me choose.”

Ani knows this. He’s known it since hearing their speeders approach, and he knows it now, as sweat gathers at his temples, as the fear starts to pool in his gut with the knowledge of what he has to do next.

He frowns. His fingers twitch at his side. “I like my odds.”

Ani takes a deep breath and opens himself up to the Force.

In the same breath, he summons the weapon hidden in his cloak inside the house. It flies, crashes through the glass of the windows and into his waiting hand as he ignites it with a flick of his wrist, just in time to use it to block a few shots. 

The red saber crackles against the mists, its crossguard flaring, bathing Ani in flickering crimson.

He takes another deep breath to quell the intensity thrumming in his veins, the push and pull. The crash of power, tethering him to everything. The Force, like a flood.

 _The crystal is the heart of the blade,_ Ani starts to meditate, as Grett and his men advance against him. As he navigates the chaos like instinct. Like breathing.

_The heart is the crystal of the Jedi._

~†~

It happens far too fast for Atticus Pryde to react with any coherence.

One moment, it is twelve-to-one, their cornered ghost held at blasterpoint, his hands up in surrender.

The next, chaos.

Suddenly a weapon is ignited, and the knowledge that their captive is now armed _out of nowhere_ makes blasters fire all over, most shots missing, others hovering in air before they’re redirected against the assailants, and their ghost is moving now, cutting his way through those in proximity while the rest are hit by stray bolts. The phantom weaves across the crossfire, the mercs and smugglers firing in frenzy at his dark figure, his lone weapon manoeuvred easily in his hands, its yellow glow bright against the red night, rendering all firepower useless. Blasters fly out of hands, and a few men have given up altogether, fear gripping them to escape.

 _A lightsaber,_ Atticus dumbly thinks as fear sinks its teeth into his psyche. _He is wielding a lightsaber._

Atticus watches for a moment as their captive wreaks havoc against all his men. 

He regrets ever thinking they were dealing with anything less.

He drops his blaster and makes to run away, shoving the chained little boy away from him…

But an invisible force lifts him off-ground and he is flailing in mid-air, screaming for his life.

When he is turned around, he sees the litter of bodies and the smoking ruins.

Before him stands the ghost, still shrouded in his cloak, hand outstretched, holding Atticus up by what he is coming to realize is a masterful manipulation of an invisible nature.

Too late, it comes to him: this is no ordinary ghost.

The lightsaber, however, is turned off and put away, as he is pulled closer, until they are eye-level, with Atticus’ feet hanging a few inches above ground.

“I haven’t had to kill in a very long time,” the ghost tells him, his voice grisly and low, vehement in the way it is spoken through harried breaths. “And I don’t intend to make it a habit, but _you…_ ”

Atticus feels the barely-restrained constriction around his throat; not a vice, not yet. Only a warning.

“You and your men don’t hold life with the same regard,” the ghost tells him, as he looks at the wide-eyed little boy on the ground, watching them from a few paces away, unable to run from the firefight.

“Please,” Atticus wheezes out of desperation and pure panic, “I’ll give you anything you want. I am—I have the means, I can give you moons and planets, and, and a ship to escape on, an army, a—you name it! I can give it to you, _please_! I—”

He feels his throat constrict just a little bit further. 

“What I _want,_ ” the ghost snarls, “is beyond yours to give. You already knew that.”

Atticus Pryde might as well have seen his life flash before his eyes at the insinuation.

~†~

Poe and Hux watch helplessly as Rose gets up from her chair and paces, her hands on her hips as she turns away from them, breathing deeply. Hux gets up with his cane and tries to approach her, but Rose sticks out a finger. A gesture to back off.

Poe had a feeling she wouldn’t take kindly to the revelation; he himself had not fared well upon receiving the news.

He’d sent Finn and a few other Force-sensitives, to scout the truth about rumours of a powerful Force-user in possession of a lightsaber, getting into a skirmish with some spice traders in the Outer Rim.

They followed the trail, and what they’d found instead was a marker of a grave, in the Praxeum ruins of Dathomir.

“Darling—”

“Not now,” Rose tells her husband, “I’m trying to focus.”

They give her a few moments, and when she turns back to them, her eyes are wet, and glimmering, and determined. “It’s not true.”

“Rose—”

“I _know_ it’s not true. Rey is out there. She is out there and _she is still alive._ ”

 _We can’t be sure of that_ , Poe does not say. Not because it would hurt his friend to say it out loud, but because it hurts him well enough to acknowledge.

~†~

For most of Ani’s life, the Force had always been an uncontrollable tide;

Opening himself up to it fully felt… much like what he imagines touching the livewire of a power generator feels like. But it isn’t pain that courses through him, as he lets the invisible direct his senses and instinct takes over, his hand and his mind and his entire physicality attuned to the chaos of blasters around him, moving with tenacity as Grett and his men pour all their firepower on him;

No, what courses through Ani at the moment does not resemble pain at all. Only power.

Within a period of several tense moments and several explosions of blasterfire, Ani has blocked and disarmed two of Grett’s six-man team, their blaster bolts ricocheting against them, their own blasters yanked out of their arms in quick successions, their advances against him halted by their clumsy, tripping feet. Bolts are redirected or held in stasis, before exploding elsewhere.

Until one bolt catches him in the shoulder;

He nearly trips, but the Force rears like a creature inside him, fuelling his instincts as he successfully manoeuvres himself behind a tree in the courtyard, barely blocking their blasts, catching his breath after the strenuous exercise in survival.

The green mists have mostly cleared; chased away by blaterfire and bodies moving around the courtyard.

Some of Grett’s men find themselves flustered and weaponless, while others start to hesitate at Grett’s orders.

To Grett’s infinite aggravation.

He flicks his lightwhip like a menace against the tree and its branches catch fire upon impact. A few blaster bolts shower against the tree trunk that shields Ani. He feels himself drained beyond exhaustion, the pain escalating on his shoulder. His senses on overdrive, his breathing harsh as sweat drips down his hair, from the heat of the scorching tree and the burning of the Force through his body.

But as though from some distance, he hears the sound of a lightspeed engine, zipping away. The Pava-Kins are safe.

He sighs in relief, even as the branches above him start to catch fire;

The burning tree in the courtyard illuminates the scene in hot, flickering yellow. 

He powers down his lightsaber as he clutches at his shoulder; wet and warmth seeps through.

“You’re outnumbered!” Grett yells from behind him, almost pleading, almost, were it not for the still occasional blasterfire that he has his men rain at the tree trunk, Ani would think he almost sounds regretful. “Kriffin’— Don’t do this, Ani! It doesn’t have to be —”

But whatever Grett had been trying to say is cut off. 

Ani hears some shuffling, even as he senses several blaster bolts go off _not_ in his general direction.

He would think it was his bleeding shoulder and the fiery tree he’s leaning on that’s causing a hallucination; he quickly feels how little energy he has left, slumping down as he feels the heat of the burning tree above just above his head — or perhaps, his legs giving out as the Force drains him up — his vision dizzy, his breathing still harsh and harried. Sweat dripping down his face.

He nearly blacks out but for someone rounding the tree towards him;

Eerily, he realises he no longer hears or senses much of anything else except the footsteps on the damp grass. Ani straightens up, tries to power his lightsaber;

But it is yanked out of his hands as though from some invisible force.

_So that’s what it feels like._

His lightsaber — his most guarded possession, at that — flies into the waiting palm of one of Grett’s men, and there is very little Ani can do about it, what with his other hand still gripping the half-burnt hole in his shoulder.

In the light of the burning tree above him, and despite the fuzziness of his vision as he feels his life force drain out of him from exhaustion and loss of blood, Ani looks up.

The man is unfamiliar; he had never seen him in his previous runs with the cartels, or he cannot remember. He cannot tell whether the man is that much older than him. Ani blinks.

The man leans down over him, kneeling, and grimaces at Ani’s shoulder. He works something like distaste in his mouth. Then, he is reaching out to touch it…

Ani would flinch away, were he in a more conscious state of mind to do so. Instead, he merely seems to shrug his dissent, as the man places a firm hand on his shoulder.

He didn’t know what to expect. 

Certainly not the Force, reacting in a way Ani was familiar with, when it was being manipulated;

The shifting tides that flowed all around them seemed to move, to gravitate where the man was kneeling and where his hand rested on Ani’s blood-soaked tunic, and Ani’s defensiveness turns into speechless surprise, when he _feels_ the Force knitting his skin and bone and muscle back together;

The man hardly blinks. His face focused, almost passively, on Ani’s shoulder.

Ani panics at the sudden and powerful way he never knew the Force could be used;

 _So that’s what it feels like,_ he thinks wryly again, at being surprised by the way the man was healing him, channeling the invisible around them into the damage on his shoulder.

A moment longer, and it is done, and there is a clarity and sudden painlessness that inhabits Ani; he is a little shocked when he no longer feels the wound, despite still feeling the exhaustion pull at his consciousness.

He looks up at the man, who merely shakes his head out, as though coming out of meditation, before looking squarely at Ani with an assessing look. Then he’s standing up and holding a hand out, away from the burning tree on which Ani was haphazardly leaning.

Ani scrambles to his feet, taking the proffered hand and stepping away from the now apparent heat of the tree. Without Ani’s instinctive Force to keep the fire at bay from his body, the tree starts to fully burn where he was lying not moments ago.

“That’s mine,” is the first thing that Ani croaks out after testing his weight on his feet. He reaches out for his red lightsaber, gait unsteady—

But the man is quick to step back and keep it out of his reach, glaring at him first.

“A little thanks would be order, I think,” the man tells him, gesturing to Ani’s shoulder, before nodding once in appraisal and good humour at Ani’s still-confused expression. He holds out Ani’s saber back to him, which Ani quickly takes. 

“I haven’t seen a weapon like that in… well, _ever_. Only heard of them, those lightsabers,” the man tells him, as Ani looks around them and takes in the way Grett and his men lay scattered across the courtyard. Presumably unconscious and disarmed, blasters laying on the grass.

“That, on the other hand, I am familiar with,” the man says, as Ani catches Grett’s lightwhip tremble slightly near Grett’s prone body, before flying from the ground and into the man’s hand.

Ani finally turns back to the man.

They size up one another, hesitant in the way one regards those whose secrets are similar to one’s own.

“You did all this? H—how?” Ani asks, clearly still unrecovered from the exertion of the last hour. Not to mention nearly _dying_ , were it not for the stranger in front of him.

The stranger shrugs. Squints at him, before gripping the lightwhip tightly, until it is dismantled with a crack in half. “Same as you.”

“You don’t have a lightsaber,” Ani implies the question, just as the man toys with the pieces of the lightwhip, seemingly trying to pry something out of it...

The man shrugs again, before finally taking out what Ani sees to be a crystal from inside the weapon. Ani almost misses that the man has his own blasters strapped on his person. “The Force isn’t just handy with a laser sword. Tem,” the man says, pocketing the crystal before extending his hand, which Ani shakes. His crisp Core World accent stands in contrast with his muddy smuggler’s attire, and Ani finds himself with more questions than he can grasp.

“Ani. How did you—”

“Now’s no time, Grett won’t be out for long and he’ll be pissed as all Sith when he’s up,” the man tosses back to Ani in passing as he cuts across the courtyard towards the speeders, reaching into each of four of them to make quick work of gutting the engines, ripping out components from their wiring, before mounting one of two he leaves intact. “We need to get to the ports now. Get them off our trail sooner.”

Ani stands stock still, unsure as of yet what to do. 

He hadn’t planned past the point of outrunning Grett that evening; he’d only wanted the Pava-Kins to escape. He hadn’t thought past the outcome of his little stunt beyond making sure that the family wasn’t going to get hurt on his behalf.

He certainly didn’t expect to survive taking a blaster bolt to the shoulder, being outnumbered six-to-one.

Which, apparently, was five-to-two.

“Who— sorry, who are you?” Ani asks, still croaking, still disoriented. Still a little drained from the way the Force has just wreaked havoc in him, and then flowed to _heal_ him, after going so long without opening himself up to it. He senses the way the Force flows through Tem as well, only much more controlled. He must have missed it during the fight, what with the adrenaline fueling him first and foremost. “How do you—how do you know how to use the Force like that—”

“All in good time, but we really have to go,” Tem tells him, gesturing to the litter of bodies around them, and the burning tree.

“Where?”

Tem lets the corner of his mouth turn up as Ani takes his own speeder. _Finally,_ _a worthwhile question,_ is what his expression seems to say.

“To find the last Jedi, of course,” Tem tosses over his shoulder, before he revs his speeder off into the green mists, Ani following.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hallo! Thank you for reading! A few things:
> 
> \- Yes, this is a one-shot, because idk if I'll ever have the energy to put work into this monster; it's just a speculative first chapter of what X might look like in my head. :)
> 
> \- Title taken from the [Crystal Code.](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Jedi_Code/Legends#Crystal_Code)
> 
> \- Tem is Temiri Blagg, aka [Broom Boy from TLJ.](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Temiri_Blagg)
> 
> \- [Moenia](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Moenia/Legends) is a city in Naboo, known for its green mists. 
> 
> \- [Dathomir](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Dathomir)
> 
> \- [Jedi Praexeum](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Jedi_Praxeum_\(Dathomir\))
> 
> \- [Lightwhip](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Lightwhip/Legends)
> 
> \- [Kyber Crystal](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Kyber_crystal)
> 
> \- [Nuna](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Nuna) Stew 
> 
> \- _"Olar lies te kyr'yc jetiise. Ogir Kelir cuyir nayc naak par kaysh"_ translates as "Here lies the last Jedi. There shall be no peace for her."


	2. THE BLADE

_We are, all of us, stories._

_Bound by meaning and narrative chance; little exercises in sense-making, in the unlikely cohesion in chaos. We are all anomalies in the face of the universe. Life, itself, is an anomaly. But we are stories that way._

_For the fabric of the galaxy is woven by the unlikely, the anomalous, the impossible._

_And the Force is the very essence of it. That which allows for the impossible, and gives it sense and structure._

_You must remember this: the ability to know the Force this way is a gift._

_And this is the foundation of all wisdom of it._

.:.

Poe Dameron knows that the most trustworthy chatter arrives by, sometimes, the most unexpected of channels. His days of being a high-ranking commander in a rebel faction has taught him to never put a ceiling on the ways valid intelligence can make itself known.

Hux himself sold First Order secrets by establishing contact with the woman who once bit his finger.

So when chatter from cantinas start echoing the same story all over the Mid Rim regions — from their very own planet, Naboo — Connix consults with Dameron, who starts to listen.

As hearsay would have it, rumours that tell of skirmishes against a few emerging Force-slaver cartels have been circulating for well over several years now — the vengeful Ghost is a favoured fiction amongst the galaxy’s most notorious — but it was only just a week ago when rumours of a different, more _concrete_ variety started cropping up. 

About a certain incident in Moenia.

“I hear he took on _twelve_ men, all on his own.”

“It was _nine_ , I’d bet my credits on it!”

“Those damn Force-users, I tell you. They’re going to be the end of us all…”

Dameron levels a look at Finn, even as both men perk their ears up to attention while sipping their respective drinks, dressed down and covered by Finn’s subtle use of a Force distraction in an upscale cantina just outside of Theed’s spaceports. 

After a few hours of listening to only slight variations to the same story, the two men head back to their High Council offices, to discuss the sensitive matter behind the closed doors of the Councilmen’s conference room. 

With a sigh, his palms leaning over the cold hologlass surface of the table, Dameron fixes Finn with the most important observation:

“So… it was a crossguard lightsaber.”

“Looks like it,” Finn replies. His robes aren’t the Councilmen’s robes given their little evening reconnaissance, but his shoulders are straight and his posture is trained with the poise of a man who is used to the public eye.

The looming question remains unasked for moments more, hanging over them in the way of the old war, until Finn breaks the silence.

He frowns at the galactic map on the hologlass, glowing red at certain points in the Outer Rim and the Unknown Regions, spread out like bleeding across trade routes. Markings of chatter. Of Force-sensitives and Force sightings. Younglings bartered like animals to slaughter and slavery. “If, and only _if,_ there were some truth to the rumours—”

“You know there is.”

Finn glares at Poe. “Assuming they’re true,” he continues, “and that… Solo is still, somehow, _alive—_ ”

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Poe comments, of people coming back from the dead.

“—then you know who’ll be after him. If word gets out that the Supreme Leader, the most _powerful_ Darksider in the war was still _kicking it_...”

“They’ll be out for his blood. Or his power. Mystics are cropping up all over the Mid-Rim territories; the syndicates are gonna have a field day trying to get their hands on him,” Poe finishes the thought for them both.

Not that it quite explains the phenomenon to either of them. Or what to do next.

To the world, the Supreme Leader Kylo Ren was the disgraced son of General Leia Organa-Solo: Darksider, fiend, and public enemy number one. Rightfully vanquished by Rey herself.

But after the Battle of Exegol, Rey had confided to very few about his role in turning the tide; even fewer about the price he paid to do so. Poe remembers it well.

Those first few weeks after the war, and how they slowly took their toll on the Jedi who brought about their victory. As generally ignorant as Poe was back then of the human cost of winning, his first glimpses of the aftermath had been in Rey’s eyes… and the light that seemed to dwindle in them, following Kylo Ren’s — Ben Solo’s — death. 

Solo, loathe as they were to admit it at first, had been critical to their victory.

It had been painful to watch the woman he had died for, living with the pain of losing him.

She certainly hid it well; in the subsequent celebrations, and the rebuilding and reconstruction efforts of the succeeding months, Rey had followed the Resistance with loyalty, dutifully fulfilling her part as a beacon of hope for a peaceful future as the last Jedi. But Poe had, by way of osmosis and spending enough time with Rose and Finn — certainly not through his “truly groundbreaking commitment to tactlessness”, as Hux had often mocked — discovered that their Jedi was hurting.

 _“It’s like half of my soul is missing”,_ she had confessed to him after a silence, one quiet night following a grueling Council meeting. Her voice soft, her smile bitter and sad.

Poe would never forget the look on her face. 

He didn’t think he could ever forgive the man once known as Kylo Ren. Until he had glimpsed Rey’s grief, and the toll it took on her to hide it, that evening in Yavin. Now, the look is etched into his memory. It was then that he had decided to learn how to forgive, how to remember. Not just Ben, but himself, and Armitage Hux, and the whole damn war. 

He had been determined to convince the emerging Council to get their facts right about the Supreme Leader and his last moments turning to the Light, but before they had started to record proper accounts of the war, Rey had disappeared.

Taking with her all possibility of redeeming Ben Solo’s name, in the eyes of a galaxy ravaged by the First Order.

They — Rey’s very few trusted friends — had had many debates over this. And the consensus was that it wasn’t their story to tell.

“This is all very… hypothetical,” Finn comments, rubbing the creases between his frown. Poe feels the same tension headache from their hypothesising. “And anyway, it’s been two decades. He can’t have been just… alive this whole time!”

Poe thinks, and thinks hard. If there’s one thing he remembers about Leia Organa’s son from his own childhood, it’s this:

Ben Solo could be a petty, bitter smartass when he wanted to be.

“Oh, you don’t know the man. Believe me, he just might be. If only to spite the galaxy who wants him dead,” Poe replies, his statement making so much sense as he says it. He shakes his head, remembering the tall, gangly Solo in their very young days. 

Anything is possible, after all.

If Ben were still alive, _if Ben was actually alive…_

 _Then maybe, just maybe, we get to save history one last time,_ Poe thinks.

He smiles to himself. The first strains of hope curving his mouth up in a smirk as he looks down at the map on the table’s hologlass. Red streaking across the blue of the galaxy.

“Solo, you bastard. If you’re out there... where _the hell_ are you?”

.:.

The rumour spreads fast;

The news of two Force-users on the run trickled outward; a pebble turning ripples into waves, carried upon ears that were quick to pick up any and all intelligence about Force-sensitives across the galaxy.

Just as it had reached Theed, it also reached other parties. 

Whispers across self-deleting holograms, encoded messages in exchange for credits, communiqués passing hands like chips at a gambling den for the chance at winning such a prize. The novelty of older Force-users drove the chatter, and within twenty-four hours, word had gotten out and about. 

Like clockwork, an underground bounty is released for two young men of around twenty and twenty-seven standard years of age, last seen in the spaceports of Moenia, in the planet of Naboo.

But it is not bounty hunters, however, who gets the lead on tracking these persons of interest.

It is something else entirely.

.:.

“We can’t make planetfall in kriffin’ _Corellia,_ are you on spice?!” Tem’s exclamation is loud, nearly tapering to a squeak of outrage from the _Falcon’s_ cockpit as he pilots them through the black market’s Mid-Rim trade routes. Which, to Ani’s great consternation, requires skillful navigation out of several asteroid fields that he is unfamiliar with.

“If we make the pitstop at Kor Vella—”

“You’re a nerve burner, mate.”

“— then we have at least three territories to lose them in, and the Core Worlds are much harder to parse through for two Force-sensitives.” Ani makes his point by showing Tem a holo of their complex and zagging pathway through the galaxy, green tinges across denser territories in the central systems. Tem only glances at it, disdain still apparent where his scoff is hanging off his mouth.

“You do realise that it works both ways, yeah? The Core Worlds are infinitely more populous, not to mention, that’s where _a lot of syndicates run their home base._ It’s like walking into a colony of bloody rancors... Let’s make a pitstop somewhere in the Outer Rim first, bounce over to the Western Reaches before doubling back to Theed. It’s— it’s a much better plan.”

Ani frowns, because what Tem has just said is plainly untrue.

There _are_ syndicates and cartels and criminal organisations in Corellia, but none as powerful as the ones in the Mid Rim and Outer Rim systems. Corellia is an “old girl”, as they called it amongst their kind. She’d had her gritty history, but she’s all but washed up.

“This isn’t about the ‘better plan’, is it,” Ani says. Calmly, with a rational realisation. 

Tem merely glowers at him, before turning back to the viewport, minding an asteroid but skewing the _Falcon_ away a little too harshly.

“What’s in Corellia?” Ani asks, certain now that he has asked the right question when Tem reacts with a rather violent grimace, without even turning his head from the viewport.

After meeting in the most unfortunate of circumstances at the Pava-Kin homestead and fleeing the scene, they had headed straight to Moenia’s spaceport in the dead of night, where Ani had moved the Falcon to a little-known offsite hangar, at Jess’ suggestion. 

But they arrived only to discover that more of Grett’s men were hanging around the spaceport, waiting for the six-man team to report back.

Ani had been fortunate enough to have had Tem with him.

Recognised as one of Grett’s men, Tem had easily snuck in and incapacitated the remaining mercenaries. It had taken them two hours and Tem’s dismantling of Grett’s own ship — a compatible Corvette-class cruiser, _thank Maker_ — to repair the Falcon in enough working order for them to make their escape.

Ani had planned to head straight to Theed to ask Senator Poe Dameron about his father, but Tem had dissuaded him, arguing that more of Grett’s men — or _Atticus’,_ Maker help them — would be after him and his ship, and that leading them straight into the planet’s capital would be a mistake that could cost lives in a bloodbath.

They had agreed: they would lose the trail first, before anything else.

But that was the extent to which they had both gotten acquainted with the other; there had not been the time nor the luxury of extended conversation, for Ani to ask Tem about what in _kriffin’ hell_ was going on, and how Tem — a powerful and slightly older Force-sensitive — had been able to find him. And why.

Had Tem been looking for him? What was he doing with Grett’s men? And how did he know so much about the Force? Was he a smuggler, a merc, or both?

All pertinent questions that would have to remain unanswered, Ani supposes, until they made their first pitstop for hyperfuel and supplies, before resuming travel to ensure they were well off the cartels’ radars.

The two of them took turns navigating across hazardous terrain manually, unable to rely on autopilot lest they bump into unpleasant company along the way, seeing as their safest recourse were the “backalley” trade routes more often used by the galaxy’s most shady and unsavoury characters.

Tem had proven rather capable of flying, to Ani’s peace of mind; he was pleasant enough, if rather secretive and sarcastic. It didn’t bother Ani, save for when they had their disagreements on which route to take, and who would be piloting. He told him his full name: Temiri Blagg. He mentioned in passing that he had been alive — albeit quite young — during the war, and that he had a vested, “completely un-evil” interest in finding the last Jedi.

“ _If you’d had my abilities as long as I did, and you’d seen what I have,”_ Tem had confessed one evening, half-asleep in the cockpit while Ani took over navigation, “ _It wouldn’t even be a question._ _You’d want to know what you could do about it. About all this,”_ Tem had said, uncrossing his arms slowly from where they rested tightly around his chest, only to gesture tiredly around him. “ _You can’t go somewhere… you can’t—can’t_ do anything _if you don’t know how to pilot the kriffin’ ship you’re given.”_ Ani knew Tem hadn’t been referring to flying.

But that had been the extent to which Ani had gotten to know the Force-sensitive who had saved his life. Tem didn’t volunteer any more information.

In any other circumstance, Ani would be loath to let the virtual stranger pilot his vessel in any capacity. But, being opened up to the ebb and flow of the Force, he had reason to trust his instincts. Which told him that Tem bore no ill will.

Except now, of course, as Tem glowered at the mere mention of Corellia.

He doesn’t reply immediately, moving his mouth against his teeth like he were grinding context into dust to keep himself from telling.

Ani almost gives up and forgets about it after a while — hunkering himself into his seat, ready to pass out before his turn to pilot — until Tem breaks the silence.

“I was from Corellia.”

Ani finds it easy to keep the sleepiness at bay, offering no commentary. Tem continues:

“It was… not a _while_ back, I’m not that old. But not recent history either. I was sold to one of the noble houses. After the war. Before that, I was an urchin on Canto Bight, in Cantonica. But that’s another story.” There’s a pause as Tem navigates them through a tricky patch of rock, before he continues. Ani refrains from reacting, except to stay awake and listen. 

“A lot of my life was spent there. It’s not a place I’m keen on getting back to.” He scoffs then. Not derisively. Only privately, as though he were enjoying a particularly unfunny inside joke. “That’s the thing about war. Doesn’t matter who wins, orphans are still orphans. Debts still debts.”

“How’d you get out?” Ani asks.

Finally, Tem’s countenance lightens, as though this was the only part he wanted to talk about. “The Force. And a friend I could trust,” he replies, turning to Ani, now less of a stranger than he was not two moments ago. There is still that frown he wears in perpetuity, but Ani guesses that that is less of an expression and more of just who he is.

 _The Force, and a friend._ Ani acknowledges this for the gesture that it is.

Briefly, he remembers the Pava-Kins, and hopes to the Maker they had gotten far and away fast enough. “Are they looking for you? In Corellia?” Ani asks.

Tem shakes his head, a conclusive _no._ “It’s been ten years, I doubt anyone’d put in the effort to find a house hand who escaped.” He sighs once, conceding. “Fine, then. Corellia it is, but _only_ to stock up on hyperfuel. We need enough for a lightspeed skip.”

.:. 

“ _I thought you said no one was looking for you!”_ Ani hisses as a fourth-class security droid cuffs them right off the ramp of the _Falcon._ As soon as they had docked and a droid had registered their faces, they were suddenly surrounded and ordered to halt.

It turns out that being a house hand did not exempt Tem’s face from being on the records.

“ _It’s been a decade_ , it was a reasonable guess!” Tem answers, already handcuffed with a scowl on his face, and being escorted away first.

“Temiri Blagg,” a commander-class droid addresses them as they are walked — surrounded by a dozen security droids with blasters — away from the _Falcon_ and into the spaceport offices of Kor Vella. “You are hereby under arrest for the following crimes against the crown—”

“Crimes against th— _what?”_

“—which are as follows: One, conspiracy to commit treason—”

“ _What?!_ ” is an indignant squeak as Tem stutters in his steps, jolted as they are towards the lifts at blasterpoint.

“—conspiracy to steal from the royal House of Sal, attempted felony against a member of the royal House of Sal...”

While the droid reads the charges as they are jerked and hustled towards the spaceport proper, Ani throws the most irritated glare he could manage — _Are you serious?! —_ at Tem, whose own confusion is clear in the way his expression twists with every accusation — _I have no kriffin’ clue what they’re on about!_

“—embezzlement, and finally, evading law enforcement and legal summons for ten years, eight months, and fifteen days. You are hereby charged with these crimes and will be brought before the aggrieved to answer for yourself and-or your co-conspirators,” the droid mechanically finishes, nodding this time to Ani, who looks just as shocked as though _he_ were the one being tried for high treason.

But before they are summarily pushed into a lift by the droids, Tem protests: “Wait, wait, wait, wait, I claim my right to know under whose charges!”

The droid tells him:

“The charges reviewed against you were officially submitted by a member of the House of Sa—”

“Was it Thrackan? It was, wasn’t it?” Tem spits out, almost as violently as his charges.

“Governor-General Thrackan Sal is dead.”

Ani watches a brief glimmer of surprise pass over Tem’s face, before his glower is back in place. “Then who, exactly, am I answering to?”

“Lady Netal, steward of the House of Sal, represents the aggrieved. You will be escorted to her before any indictments are made, prior to your detainment as you await trial.”

“Detainment?” Ani nearly pales, at the same time Tem exclaims, “Netal? Like… _the_ Bazine Netal?!” white as a washed Stormtrooper.

.:.

They are told that they will be received at the Sal estate, in the mountainside town of Doaba Guerfel. In the transports on the way there, Ani internally bemoans the lack of any lifeform nearby; all of their guards are droids, which is rather strange for such an industrial, metropolitan planet.

“Can I ask why isn’t there anyone around? Can’t we at least speak to your commanding officers—”

“There’s no point,” Tem tells him in dejection, slumped across from him as they are carted away in a transport landspeeder. The road is bumpy, and Ani is restless. But Tem is the picture of frustrationless resignation, even with the two other droidguard pointing blasters at them.

“The spaceport droidguard won’t let you within an inch of any sentient lifeforms unless you pass their scans with flying colours,” he says, uncaring that the droids are right there.

As if reading his surprise on his face, there’s a small smirk on Tem’s mouth before he adds: “They’re not programmed with social comprehension either. You’re not offending the rustbuckets, don’t worry. Maker _forbid_ we hurt their feelings.”

With nothing left to do but to try to quell his rising distress — exaggerated by his unfamiliarity with the flow of the Force in him — Ani takes a deep, deep breath. He sits up straight, and closes his eyes.

_There is no emotion, there is only peace…_

His concentration is broken by a harsh snort coming from the man across him.

“Keep thinking that and you just might meditate us out of these cuffs,” Tem tells him, still slumped across the transport, but less “resigned” and more amused.

Ani frowns.

“How did you—”

And then, like a foreign thought dropped into his skull by someone _not_ him: _You keep forgetting that we’re alike._

“And really: the Jedi Code? _That’s_ what you’re simmering in there?” Tem adds.

Ani would be insulted at Tem’s offhand condescension, were it not for his surprise.

The Jedi Code isn’t something people know about.

Hell, Ani isn’t even sure _anyone else_ knew about it.

“How’d you know about the Code?”

Tem looks at him for a long moment. Assessing, thinking. With that same downward expression he was so fond of wearing. If Tem weren’t a Force-user, Ani would have already sensed the general trend of his thoughts. Alas, Ani is left only with the scowling.

Finally, Tem breaks the silence with a sigh and a roll of his eyes, as though deciding to no longer bother:

“I met an older Force-user, some time ago. He trained me in the ways of the Force, on the Jedi and the Sith and all that. He was a bit of a mentor, really. Learned a lot from him.”

Ani doesn’t need the Force to sense the defensiveness that drops over Tem’s countenance. A kind of shifting, as though he were trying to pass it off as unimportant.

It is anything _but._ Especially to Ani, who listens with intent. Tem continues:

“And then he left. One day, just—” he makes a whooshing gesture clumsy with his bound hands, the corners of his mouth in a sharp frown, “He was gone. Never saw him again,” Tem finishes, awkwardly scratching at his ear before huffing and settling back into a recline.

“I’m sorry,” Ani says, because he is.

Tem shrugs. “Was a long time ago.”

 _That doesn’t make it easier_ , Ani thinks, but does not say. Being left behind can be a wound that is fresh every day.

Ani debates asking more about this older Force-user—some instinct tells him to, but he reads the room and decides against it. Another time.

There is a comfort in the silence, before Tem resumes his staring and scowling, though perhaps now with less mistrust. “What’s _your_ deal, then? You’re not much younger, what’s a secret Force-user doing with the likes of Grett and his merry men?”

The accusation is implied, but Ani takes no offense. Tem knew, after all, of the reason Grett had been after him. He merely shrugs. “We had a misunderstanding.”

Tem looks monumentally unconvinced, one eyebrow cocked in amusement. “You stole his ship.”

“Okay, but, that’s not really—it’s not, strictly speaking, _stealing_ ,” Ani excuses, about to add _Because the Falcon is technically mine,_ but is cut off when the landspeeder halts with insensitive abruptness, both of them jolting into the unfeeling metal limbs of their droidguards, who echo in a mechanical voice: 

“We have arrived.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i make absolutely no promises. 😤
> 
> anyways, to those who reviewed the first chapter (posted back when my artistic integrity was intact) which was supposed to be a one-shot... uwu. thank u for being so encouraging and now i have another monster of a fic to wrangle. :(( i make no promises tho, we'll see how much of this i can write while managing my three other WIPs hahaha (oh, no. what have i done...)
> 
> i understand not everyone enjoys OCs and we're all waiting to know wtf happened to ben and rey twenty years later... but we'll get to that. :) 
> 
> as always, this has been alphabeta'd by the lovely, brilliant Robbie (@thehobbem). All remaining mistakes are mine!
> 
> and a special thank you to Jess (@bobaheadshark) for lovingly pointing out that i wasn't able to tag mentions of pregnancy for the first chapter; i am truly so sorry if anyone got triggered or jarred about it! :( for the record, i doubt this fic will be going any deeper than mentions of pregnancy / establishing pregnancy for characters (def won't go in-depth about the experience), but i will do my best to tag extensively :)
> 
> <3 be safe, please take care of yourself and one another. and to hell with the bad takes and the ants. i love you all :)
> 
> ya'll can find me on twitter and tumblr at @reyreyalltheway 😘
> 
> — katie


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